Knife To Meet You! 6 Seph Ravosa

She was too late for breakfast. Again.

Now she would have to spend the next five hours in cla.s.s while everyone could hear the G.o.d d.a.m.n growls. Oh, and she would feel distracted too.

She stared daggers at her bedside alarm clock. A lever attatched to it's side lay in the lowered position, indicating she forgot to set the alarm last night. Again.

"Betrayer.", She mumbled, still staring at the clock. It was hard to tell if that comment reffered to the clock or herself.

She threw the covers still covering her lying figure with as much force as she could, and sat up.

Her stomach growled again.

She growled back at it.

She just sat there a moment before hopping out of the bed. She still had time before cla.s.ses at least. Not a lot of time, but enough for her to get ready and maybe make a detour to the cafeteria to grab a snack.

First task: Set up the school quill.

Professor Krys had devised an ingenious way during his first years here as a teacher to spread notices throughout the academy. He had created a few bronze rings -- three in a set -- that could be attatched to a quill using a screw. It really backweighted the feather, making it too heavy to use for long stretches of time, but that wasn't why one attatched weights to the quill.

It was to enable the quill to be used telekinetically. The 'living', as Prof. Krys liked to call them, are mana insulators. They can't be used for anything related to magic -- Her stunt a week ago drove that lesson into her skull for good. So something else needed to be attatched to the quill to allow it to move.

That in conjecture with a metal plate at her desk and a bunch more objects throughout the academy tower enchanted with telepathy and storage allowed notices from the teachers to reach the students with ease. *

Since different students were in different cla.s.ses, another enchantment was added to the rings. It stored the student's ident.i.ty and information in them. This allowed only the messages related to the student to reach them. The academy later decided to use them as identification tokens for all staff and students and required them to carry the set with them anywhere they go.

If the tower notices someone roaming around in areas they weren't authorized to enter, or just roam around without the rings at all, an alarm would be raised. She learned that the hard way too.

She took a couple of steps to reach her desk, almost b.u.mping into her chair in the process. She pulled a fresh sheet of paper from the stack of it on her bookshelf and secured it onto the metal plate inlaid into her desk. She picked up a bottle of ink with Prof. Krys' name embossed on it -- All inks currently sold in the academy supply store were made using formula's devised by him, much to Krys' own displeasure -- and placed it, cap off, in the circle inscribed on one side of the plate.

She grabbed the quill from a cup in her bookshelf, slotted the three rings onto it as quickly as she could, and placed it beside the paper.

She then just turned around, gathering her uniform from the chair beside the desk -- She kept a fresh set there every night in case she ever woke up late -- and prepared to change.

The quill in the meantime floated up, righted itself, dipped its tip into the ink bottle and started writing on the sheet of paper.

Seph paid it no mind. The quill always started with her schedule. Notices only came after that. If after a couple of minutes the quill was still writing, only then would she pay attention to it.

But as she was in the process of getting ready, she noticed it had been more than the time it ususally takes for her schedule already. And the quill was still writing. It turned out there actually were notices that day. She just hoped they weren't of an extra cla.s.s in the morning. The last thing she needed was missing a cla.s.s she didn't even know was going to happen.

She peered over the still-writing quill, reading the notice that it had almost finished jotting down.

"Prof. Jach,

Prof. Krys and I will be working on an experiment this morning. Our cla.s.ses will be shifted forward to the 2' o clock and 4' o clock slots respectively.

Enjoy the free morning!"

She finished reading right as the quill lifted up. The feather almost hit her nose. It still made her feel funny and she tried not to swat the quill away.

She then looked up at her schedule. It really would be a blessed day if those two cla.s.ses were the first things she had this morning.

"Schedule:

Morning:

7:00 - 9:00 : Runic Interpretation and Modification : Prof. Jach Jafferi -- MOVED TO EVENING SLOT: 2:00 - 4:00

9:00 - 11:00 : Intermediate Summoning Theory : Prof. Krys Jafferi -- MOVED TO EVENING SLOT: 4:00 - 6:00

11:00 - 1:00 : Element... ", Seph stopped reading after this.

"I must be blessed by the Immortal today.", She mumbled, her mood brightening up a bit.

She shot another look at her alarm clock. "You're off the hook this time."

She then quickly finished dressing up and rushed out the door. She could afford to have a proper meal with most her morning off, and she would not delay doing so at all. Her stomach was still being noisy.

===

Jach made his way through the stone coridoors of the Practical Labs floor, down the spiralling staircase to the Theoretical Cla.s.sroom floors, across the sky bridge connecting the two spires of the tower, and across the wood lined floors of the dormitories.

The hallways were starting to fill up with students now. Cla.s.ses were about to start after all.

Jach made his way to one of the many terminals situated across the tower. They used Krys' quill network, allowing the staff to get any information they require without going through too much of a ha.s.sle. In this case, Jach used it to locate Seph's room.

Another couple of floor changes later, Jach finally turned to enter the coridoor where Seph's room was situated, only to b.u.mp into her right as he turned.

===

Seph b.u.mped into some giant brat as she turned the corner.

"Hey! Watch it!", she complained as she righted herself, without looking up to see who the brat was.

Her usually lazy gut feeling growled. Or well, her stomach did. But nevertheless she felt an ominous chill running up her spine.

'It isn't a regular brat, is it?', She thought, then cursed at herself. 'Don't jinx it already you stupid brain.'

"Ah, Seph!", called out an all to familiar voice.

's.h.i.t', she thought.

She gulped and looked up. Happy now that she hadn't added 'brat' to her 'watch it' when she had complained.

"Professor Jach! Good morning!", She quickly blurted. "Sorry, I was careless I didn't see you there.", And tacked on an apology.

She spied at his face to judge his reaction.

He seemed very very distracted.

"Nevermind. I was looking for you. Follow me.", He waved and started back the way he came.

'What's up with him today?', She wondered at his unusually cut and dry reply. He was usually more eccentric than that. Nowhere near as much as his husband, but then again, who could top Professor Krys?

"Is... it urgent, Sir?", She ran to catch up to him and asked.

"Yes. We have to hurry." He uttered without even slowing his pace.

Seph's stomach growled again.

'Drat! There goes my breakfast!', She thought, following the professor quietly.